The invention relates to a gas compressor which can be switched between operation under load and operation in idle, and more particularly, a gas compressor of the type in which a suction chamber can be connected via at least one suction valve to a compression chamber and an outlet chamber can be connected via at least one outlet valve to the compression chamber.
A gas compressor of this type is disclosed, for example, in German patent DE 43 21 013 (U.S. Pat. No. 5,503,537), incorporated herein by reference.
Gas compressors of known construction generally include a compression chamber in which a movable compression element, i.e. a striking piston, alternately draws in the gas to be compressed and then compresses it. In order to achieve efficient performance in the output of compressed gas, the best utilization of the volume of the compression chamber is generally desirable. For this reason, it is general practice to keep the volume of the compression chamber remaining in the compression phase and which cannot be utilized, which is also referred to as the "dead space," to a minimum.
When a gas compressor which is optimized in this manner is operated under load, a sufficient amount of compressed gas may be produced by the gas compressor even at relatively low rotational speeds. However, when the gas compressor is operated at a variable operating speed, for example, when connected to the drive engine of a vehicle, the output quantity may be undesirably great during extended operation at high rotational drive speeds, for example, when traveling on a super-highway. In such instances, the gas compressor has a relatively high power consumption, which results, among other things, in an undesirable heating of both the gas compressor itself and the compressed gas produced thereby. To overcome this situation, it is often not practical to switch the gas compressor to idle operation, because compressed gas is no longer produced in this operating mode.
It is therefore the object of the present invention to make it possible to reduce the power consumption occurring under certain operating conditions in a gas compressor under load operated at variable operating speed, and thereby also to reduce the temperatures that are produced in this manner.